Water Music (15 page)

He opened Clares door for her, and they walked through Julias fragrant garden towards the house. Clares five-year-old
niece, Beatrice, flew down the verandah steps.

My bestest aunt, she exclaimed.

My bestest niece. Clare caught the little girl in her arms; shed grown taller, sturdier; a measure of how little Clare had seen her in the past six months.

Clares twin, Constance, came up behind the child. She flung her arms around her sister.

Happy birthday, they said simultaneously. Clare touched her sisters short
hair. It was feathered around her face where a latticework of pale scars disappeared into the grey that she, unlike her twin, didnt try to hide.

Scars on her temple, persistent reminders of the incident in the park all those years ago, the battering shed endured while crawling away from the hands, the hammer, the unbuckled trousers. For eighteen years the two women had been tethered to that night.
Both had been altered; both had survived.

Happy birthday, Constance.

Her twin released Clare from her embrace and smiled at Riedwaan.

Glad you dragged her from that work of hers she uses as an excuse not to see us, said Constance. You coming in?

Clare and Riedwaan followed her up the steps. Inside, it was all food and warmth and flickering candlelight.

The momentary silence that fell as Clare
and Riedwaan stepped into the room was swept aside by Julias offers of champagne, her taking of scarves and jackets, her reassurances that it was fine that they were late, that dinner wasnt spoiled.

Thanks, Julia. Clare hugged her older sister, glad of the warm sanctuary of her home. The red wine glowed; the silver cutlery glinted on the table. The aroma of Karoo lamb, minted yoghurt sauce, roast
potatoes, butternut, beetroot and orange salad set aside for the latecomers, Constance serving and Julia talking, weaving them together around her table. When they had finished eating, Clare helped Constance clear the table.

As Clare put the dishes into the sink, she glanced at a photograph of herself and her twin. The two of them sitting side by side on the swing at the bottom of the garden.
Before it had all happened. While there had still been parents, a garden, a family frame for the two identical girls.

Thats us at the same age as Rosa Wagner, said Clare.

Whos she?

A girl, a cellist, whose disappearance left not a ripple for three weeks.

Are you all right, Clare?

No, said Clare. Im not.

Then stop, said Constance. Do something else. Im no longer the fragile one. One day youll
push yourself too far and then youll break.

Clare ran cold water into her hands and splashed her face.

Let me pour you a glass of this. Constance took a bottle of Chenin Blanc from the fridge. At least take the edge off things. You didnt have anything to drink with dinner. There are few problems that cant be solved, at least temporarily, with a glass of wine.

I didnt feel like wine.

Pregnancys
the only thing that ever put the women in this family off drinking, said Constance. Look at Julia!

How did she manage to do it twice? said Clare, off-guard.

Her sisters gaze cut straight through Clares. It had always been like that. Constance, the one person who saw her for what she was, and even loved her for it.

Youre pregnant, arent you?

It wasnt planned.

So what, said Constance.

Its
still not planned.

You cant plan everything, Clare.

Oh? Why not?

With all your cleverness you are so stupid sometimes, said Constance. Youre thirty-six, time passes. What does Riedwaan say, anyway?

Clare stacked some plates.

You havent told him about this, have you? said Constance.

No. Clare stacked some more plates.

You must.

Laughter and music drifted into the silence between the two
sisters.

Clare, talk to Riedwaan, tell him. Then decide what you want to do together. Just this once, dont shut out the people who love you.

If I tell him, Ill have to have it, said Clare. And Im telling you, I cannot do it.

Clare, listen to me

No, you listen to me. Clare turned and faced Constance. Its a mistake. Its my mistake and only mine and I will fix it.

Youre wrong this time, said
Constance. Wrong.

Constance picked up the tray with the cake, the cake forks, and the gilt-edged plates that had been their mothers and were for special occasions only. She stalked off to the dining room. Clare followed. She took her place next to Riedwaan and turned her smile back on.

The birthday cake was homemade, with a lemon zest top. Everybody sang happy birthday and Constance blew out
the candles; Clare cut the cake. She couldnt eat any of it. And then it was over, and they were outside on the verandah; below, the city lights stretched away towards Table Bay.

Fritz was in her usual place at the top of the stairs. Clare picked her up and buried her face in the soft ruff of fur around the cats neck. With Fritz warm and purring in her arms, Clare went through to the kitchen. She caught a glimpse of her face staring at her from the cold, black window pane. She crossed the room and pulled the curtains closed. That got rid of her gaunt reflection, but
there was nothing she could do to erase her thoughts of the empty house on Sylvan Estate. Or the forest.

Theres nothing you can do now. Come to bed. If you sleep, tomorrow youll be able to think straight.

Riedwaan shepherded her towards the bedroom. He laid her on the bed, and pulled her dress off her shoulders. He ran his fingertips across her collarbones and down her sides, the curve of her
breasts, the dip of her waist, the hipbones that angled his hands towards hidden skin warm to his touch. He used his free hand to pull her under him.

She didnt turn away from him. She made herself lie still. There was the texture of his hands on her skin to think of, the roughness of his fingertips, the smoothness of his wrist against her breast. She wanted to lose herself, to erase the kaleidoscope
of images that swirled through her head. The child, the woman in the hole in the mountain, the phone dangling from the wall.

But she couldnt, and her body did not go with his, but she knew his rhythm, knew him well enough to pretend. Riedwaans breath was warm on her face. Her own was catching in her chest.

She couldnt.

She pushed him away.

I cant do it, she said.

It helps sometimes to remember
that youre alive, said Riedwaan. If you dont learn to shut the work out, it takes your life from you.

I feel like it already has. Clare traced the scorpion on his shoulder; the ink long since become part of him.

I thought that if I found out why people killed children, it would be like lancing a wound, she said. That Id be healing someone, something. Me.

Riedwaan turned onto his back and looked
up at the ceiling patterned by the street light outside.

I look at these children, said Clare. And I feel like Ive gone mad. That little girl on Friday morning. She was one too many.

She was silent a while. Riedwaan turned to face her.

When I saw her, I felt nothing. Nothing. My heart didnt even beat faster. It was like I was looking at a rag or a piece of old newspaper, said Clare. Like she
was just another piece of rubbish.

He pulled her towards him.

You feel far away, you know.

Its these cases.

It was too dark for him to read her eyes.

You and Constance in the kitchen, were you talking deep stuff?

Sister stuff, said Clare.

She seemed upset, said Riedwaan. The way she was watching you.

Shes used to running peoples lives.

She loves you, Clare.

Ja.

So do I.

Ja. There was
a lump in Clares throat. Thanks.

What were you going to tell me, earlier on, I mean? asked Riedwaan.

Oh, it can wait.

Its waited all day, said Riedwaan. Its been waiting since I left.

A siren wailed in the distance, and another close by. The nights lament.

Riedwaan, said Clare.

He lay on his back.

I need to gather myself, she said. I think I need to be alone.

The long low sound of the
foghorn penetrated the gloom.

It was one oclock when Riedwaan let himself out. Clare didnt hear anger in the click of the front door closing. A moment later she heard his bike start. The sound filled the night, then faded into silence as he rode up towards the Bo-Kaap.

Clare folded her hands over her belly, trying unsuccessfully to read what her body was telling her. Fritz arced up onto the
bed, turning once and settling herself before falling into a triumphant slumber.

Clare, though, was unable to sleep. The little girl occupied her mind: had someone hidden her, leaving her tied up where a Good Samaritan might find her? Or had she been tethered so that shed find neither help nor comfort and then die?

Anwar Jacobss words ran through her head. Hed remarked on her lack of vitamin
D, said that he didnt think her legs were able to hold her weight. Thats how brittle her bones were. He had said that the child may have been starving all her life.

Or that shed never seen the sunlight.

Clare watched the moving shadows on the ceiling.

She put thoughts of the watery cave inside her own body firmly from her mind. The storm had returned with satanic vengeance, driving the waves
against the sea wall. It sounded as if the ocean would burst through. There was an allure in the possibility that someday it would, and the ocean would wash away the city, and Clare with it.

She turned over, and stared at the clock by her bedside.

Riedwaan freewheeled down the cobbled streets of Bo-Kaap so as not to wake his neighbours. He unlocked his front door, the smell when he opened it reminding him that he had not been there for days. A heap of post lay on the floor bills, junk mail, a large envelope with an estate agents garish logo. He felt the weight of it in his hands. As heavy as money. He tossed it onto the low table in
front of the dusty TV.

He listened to his messages. One from the hospice, telling him his mother was fading. One from his ex-wife. The settlement had been finalised. She sounded pleased. That meant he was fucked, financially. He deleted them both.

He opened the windows, letting air into the old house. He took out the rubbish and looked at the dishes in the sink. He made himself a cup of coffee
Nescafé was as barista as it got in Signal Street. He smoked a cigarette, abandoned the coffee. He was wired enough as it was.

He stripped off his clothes, dropping them to the floor. Leather jacket, shoes, shirt, jeans, underwear. The shower water was freezing hed forgotten to switch the geyser on but it felt good. The icy water needled the fog out of his head. He dried off and pulled on
a tracksuit.

It was already Sunday. A day off. But it stretched as empty as a Karoo road in front of him. He had to sleep, but he stopped at his daughters empty bedroom. It had the same look as all the childrens bedrooms hed seen in the homes of many divorced fathers. The pink bunk bed hed finally managed to assemble. The few drawings shed brought home to him curling off the walls. Nothing else
left behind.

Riedwaan lay down on the top bunk where Yasmin had always slept. The blank day would come, Sunday the worst now that he had no one to take to the aquarium. He had no one to take, with a ball, to the beach. He had no one to lie on the floor with to read
Beauty and the Beast
. No one, ever since his enraged ex-wife had taken Yasmin with her to Canada. So many promises to Yasmin, to
both of them. But his phone would ring and hed be off on his bike to work. Leaving his wife to explain. Again. Until she got sick of it and packed up and left.

First hed had a woman whod left him because he was never around. Now he had a woman he suspected might leave him because she preferred to be alone.

The curtains hung askew and a sliver of moon was visible in a rent in the clouds. Riedwaan
watched it slowly slide; he must have slept, because the next thing he was aware of was the muezzin calling. Fajr, the dawn prayer signalling the fading of the night. The wolf hour passing. Riedwaan listened to the chant threading through the silence blanketing the city. He got up, but not to pray.

He flicked on the TV. He stared at the morning news while he drank his coffee black because the
milk was sour, unsweetened because the sugar was finished. The tension on the mines in the north-west had exploded into warfare overnight thirty casualties or more. He watched a looped clip of cellphone footage showing men wearing the same uniform as he did. Firing at fleeing men. When the dust cleared, Riedwaan saw bodies and some sticks and a knobkierie littering a dry piece of veld.

The massacre
had knocked the story of a child abandoned in a Cape forest from the lead. He watched the cameras pan across a wasteland filled with smoke, dust and teargas. Government lackeys and union officials talked nervously from behind a police cordon.

Where the fuck are you? he shouted at fat, absent ministers asleep in their king-size beds.

The anchor didnt answer, but she did cut to a government spokesman
who sweated and threatened but could not, would not provide answers or assurances.

Riedwaan fingered the last cigarette in his pack there was nothing for breakfast. But for the grace of Edgar Phiri, North West province is where hed be right now. Using a government-issue rifle against men who wanted enough money to feed their families.

The Cape child was up next, but there was nothing new. Just
yesterdays news being rehashed. Eager e.tv journalists calling the little girl Angel. Shallow, saccharine sentimentality. Like using air freshener to mask the stench of a corpse. Then the news teams helicopter flew in close, the aerial view shifting the perspective. The clearing was close to where Rosa Wagner had made her last phone call. And Hout Bay was threaded with paths for walkers and horse
riders that no car could traverse. The camera panned across the valley, from Izamo Yethu and its squalor to the lush paddocks along the river, across the estates and then to the castle and Hangberg beyond. The presenters patter was a potted tale of the rich and the poor and the fault lines of violence produced by proximity.